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Part of Longman's successful Short Guide Series, A Short Guide to Writing about Literature emphasizes writing as a process and incorporates new critical approaches to writing about literature. The twelfth edition continues to offer students sound advice on how to become critical thinkers and enrich their reading response through accessible, step-by-step instruction.

For Further Reading, Explication, and Comparison: William Blake’s “The Tyger” NEW

5–OTHER KINDS OF WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

A Summary

A Paraphrase

A Review

A Review of a Dramatic Production
A Sample Review: “An Effective Macbeth”

PART 2

Standing Back: Thinking Critically about Literature

6–LITERATURE, FORM, AND MEANING

Literature and Form

Literature and Meaning

Arguing about Meaning

Form and Meaning

Robert Frost, “The Span of Life”

Literature, Texts, Discourses, and Cultural Studies

Suggestions for Further Reading

7–WHAT IS INTERPRETATION?

Interpretation and Meaning
Is the Author’s Intention a Guide to Meaning?
Features of a Good Interpretation
An Example: Interpreting Pat Mora’s “Immigrants”
Thinking Critically about Literature
A Student Interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Sample Essay: “Stopping by Woods and Going On”

For Further Interpretation, Comparison, and Writing: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” NEW

Suggestions for Further Reading

A Checklist: Writing an Interpretation NEW

8–WHAT IS EVALUATION? Criticism and Evaluation
Are There Critical Standards?

Morality and Truth as Standards
Other Ways to Think about Truth and Realism

Preliminary Notes and a Sample Essay on the Theme of Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”

Preliminary Notes
“Rising into Love” (essay on “A Worn Path”)
A Brief Overview of the EssayA Checklist: Writing about Theme NEW

Basing the Paper on Your Own Responses
A Note on Secondary Sources

A Second Essay about Theme: Notes and the Final Version of an Essay on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

“ We All Participate in ‘The Lottery’ ”
The Analysis Analyzed
Suggestions for Further Reading

A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Fiction

A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about a Film Based on a Work of Literature

11–GRAPHIC FICTION NEW

Letters and Pictures

Grant Wood’s “Death on the Ridge Road” (painting)

Topic for Writing

Reading an Image: A Short Story Told in One Panel

Tony Carillo’s “F Minus”

12–WRITING ABOUT DRAMA

A Sample Essay

Preliminary Notes
“The Solid Structure of The Glass Menagerie”

Types of Plays

Tragedy

A Checklist: Writing about Tragedy

Comedy Writing about ComedyA Checklist: Writing about Comedy

Aspects of Drama

Theme

Plot

A Checklist: Writing about Plot

Characterization and Motivation

Conventions

Costumes, Gestures, and Settings

A Sample Essay on Setting in Drama

“ What the Kitchen in Trifles Tells Us”

The Analysis Analyzed

Suggestions for Further Reading

A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Drama

A Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about a Film Based on a Play

A Student’s Essay on a Filmed Version of a Play

“Branagh’s Film of Hamlet”A Checklist: Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing

13—WRITING ABOUT POETRY

The Speaker and the Poet

Emily Dickinson, “Wild Nights—Wild Nights”
The Language of Poetry: Diction and Tone
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I, being born a woman and distressed”
Writing about the Speaker: Robert Frost’s “The Telephone”
Robert Frost, “The Telephone”
Journal Entries

Figurative Language

John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
Preparing to Write about Figurative Language

Imagery and Symbolism

William Blake, “The Sick Rose”

Structure

Robert Herrick, “Upon Julia’s Clothes”

Annotating and Thinking about a Poem
The Student’s Finished Essay: “Herrick’s Julia, Julia’s Herrick”
Some Kinds of Structure
Repetitive Structure

William Wordsworth, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
Logical Structure

John Donne, “The Flea”
Verbal Irony
Paradox

Explication

A Sample Explication of Yeats’s “The Balloon of the Mind”
William Butler Yeats, “The Balloon of the Mind”

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